Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @12:53PM
from the way-to-everyone dept.

The Slashdot 10 Year Anniversary Charity Auction for the EFF is at an end and the numbers are in. We are still waiting for payment on one of the six items, but the grand total for the auctions is $9186.83. The big surprise was the anonymous reader who bought the Swag Bag AND the Low UID: he decided to donate an extra $1200 beyond his bids! Thanks to Daniel Peacock (who bought Hemos's burnt copy of Watchmen) and Michael Ravnitzk who bought Triton, the case of the first x86 that ran Slashdot in Feb 1998. He then turned around and told us to shelve it, to try to sell it again later. Instead he got a box of shirts. We're still waiting for payment on the email address, but hopefully nobody would be so crappy that they would scam a charity auction. And lastly, we would like to give special thanks to the
University of Advancing Technology (here's a Coral Cache link) who paid $3,550.00 for that hyperlink you just read past. They wanted to express their support for Slashdot and for the EFF, and I think both of us appreciate it. Thanks to everyone who bid on items and congratulations to the winners. And the rest of you - don't feel bad that you missed it. You can always make a donation later - the EFF does good work. Tell them Slashdot sent you.

Eitherway I am going to discredit comments saying how you waisted your money by buying a Mac from anyone with a 2 or 3 didgit ID. Being they spent thousands of dollars on the ability to lie about being there before the rest of us.

Ha. Funny. I'll tell you what, though, I'd donate some money - hundreds of dollars at least - to a good cause of slashdot's choosing if they would permanently fix the moderation so that moderation isn't anonymous; everyone could see *exactly* who modded what up or down, your average moderator or a slashdot editor/authority. The "low UID" and so forth are essentially useless and require nothing of slashdot either; but they could actually earn a donation fro

Agreed. Other problems:- Someone finds a sarcastic joke unfunny and it gets modded "troll" or "flamebait."- 3 people think I'm funny and I get a nice "+5, Funny" but one person thinks I'm not that funny and hits me with a "-1, Overrated." What crap. The guidelines say "focus on promoting, not demoting" but I don't think anyone reads those. Everyone just wants to form Slashdot into what they want to see, not realizing that it's (everyone hold hands now) all our differences that make Slashdot great. I see ide

Once moderation becomes non-anonymous, you'll end up with mod wars. Person X mods down person Y, person Y takes it personally and mods down all of person X's comments. This results in person X retaliating, a fuckload of emails to slashdot with the subject "MOD ABUSE!!", and every single user on slashdot is forced to sift though the comments themselves so see which are good and got modded down due to pissing contests, and which are bad and got left at 1-2 because all the mod points were used by people throwing their shit at each other.

This wouldn't fix the system at all, it would make it worse than useless.

[ ] I'm selfish and hate others[ ] I like big monopolies[X] I'm Canadian and not represented by the EFF in any which way shape or form[ ] The EFF tried to kill my daddy[ ] I'm paid by the EFF so donating to the EFF is like donating to myself[ ] Hey look!

However,

[ ] I've started an equivalent EFF in Canada[ ] I Joined the equivalent EFF in Canada[X] I Bought an EFF hat at Defcon[X] I Lost said hat at Toorcon the same year[X] I Bought another hat off their website[ ] I Regret dealing with the EFF

...except I believe it was a Canadian "anonymous reader who bought the Swag Bag AND the Low UID", so you've gotta select a different option other than "[X] I'm Canadian and not represented by the EFF in any which way shape or form".

...and I have it on good authority* that a Canadian also bought the email address, which was paid for today. Since Canadians appear to be the only people winning these auctions, I guess Canadians care more about what happens in the US more than Americans do.

* I am assuming I do not have multiple personalities that lie to each other.

(I realize that my statement of "Canadians care more" will be marked as flamebait, but prove me wrong, d*mnit!)

And let me add that while it was mostly due to other factors and thus not a permanent posting, EFF has had a Toronto bureau for the past few years. In addition, I, the chairman of the EFF, am a Canadian Citizen.So is Cory Doctorow, who worked hard for us for many years and is still an EFF fellow.

So we do care, though I won't pretend that most of our focus remains in the USA.

Adding some of my own experiences...
[ ] I'm selfish and hate others
[ ] I like big monopolies
[X] I'm Canadian and not represented by the EFF in any which way shape or form
[ ] The EFF tried to kill my daddy
[ ] I'm paid by the EFF so donating to the EFF is like donating to myself
[ ] Hey look!

However,

[ ] I've started an equivalent EFF in Canada
[ ] I Joined the equivalent EFF in Canada
[ ] I Bought an EFF hat at Defcon
[ ] I Lost said hat at Toorcon the same year
[ ] I Bought another hat off their we

The EFF is basically the ACLU of the Internet. Plus they manage to lose most of their cases. Should so much money be donated to a far-left/unAmerican organization like that? They get an awful lot of money with little to show for it, could there be a terrorism connection?

When I attended the school a couple years back they had a great relationship with the EFF. It is nice to see the school investing in the industry while showing that it is finally moving away from the game design program that consumed much of the schools resources while I attended. I have heard good things about UAT as of late and I hope this only continues that great new trend.

I attended UAT during their transition from UACT to UAT. It was a great experience, and I wouldn't have gotten my desired career without it, but tuition is pretty spendy. I suppose most private schools are spendy in comparison to public schools though.

Precisely. I have no more than $2000 in the bank at any point in time, my money is in my 401k, roth IRA, kids college funds, overfunded life insurance, home, etc. I do allright but I couldn't cough up more than a few hundred bucks at a time unless it was an emergency... the secret to being financially secure is not working for money, but making your money work for you.

internet is changing the world to the extent that in 50 years, the people who will be in charge of their countries by then will have grown up together, playing same games, doing same stuff on the internet at nights. which will totally eliminate interracial, international enmity, differences, and eventually uncooperativeness and ultimately wars. which will be a major step towards the utopia.

additionally, in local and general sense, the internet is what is making all people to get informed about anything h

just remember how you were when grown up. what you speak of are stuff done when one's a kid. not mature. back then there were different shit we were all doing. today there is 'hacking'. tomorrow there will be some different shit.

For what it's worth, the EFF achieved 4 out of 5 stars for "financial efficiency and capacity" by Charity Navigator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity_Navigator).
Even though they are a bunch of lawyers, they are a bunch of lawyers on our side. And frankly, when I donate to them, I don't care if they are buying themselves Benz's. They produce good results.

On behalf of the E.F.F. I would like to thank the crew at/. for doing this, and all the bidders for showing your geek cred and generousity to bring things up to this level. Our hardworking staff of technologists and lawyers will do great work with this money as we stand up to the NSA, AT&T, the RIAA and many other players trying to take away your rights. You can look at the long list of things we're doing at the www.eff.org web site, as well as past history. That we do all that with our modest staff continues to amaze me, and I'm inside.

I wondered a bit about how the transplant would work, too. I would've wanted to work with the slashdot folks a little slower and see if I could persuade them to do things right. Maybe I could write the SQL for them, or something.:) But it sounds like this guy had so few comments he may not have felt it was worth it.

I for one think it's really cool, and I was one of the first bidders on the auction, and if I'd won I wouldn't have been anonymous about it. I would've bragged not just about the low UID,

They might have requested anonymity so people don't ridicule themabout paying for the low UID. Well, actually, it doesn't matter why they requested anonymity. The fact of the matter is that they did. It's a little rude to point out their account when they explicitly wanted to keep it hidden.

With all the concern about the right to remain anonymous on/., I don't see why you would purposely go out of your way to lift that veil off of someone else.

But hey, your curiousity is sated. What do you care. Mod me troll, mod me whatever you like. I think it was irresponsible and inconsiderate to do that.

While true, he also donated the extra cash to the EFF so seriously, who is going to give this guy crap? For that matter even if I had an extra $10k I don't think I'd shell out to the EFF even with low uid, Natalie Portman and the hot grits included. So cheers to user id 41. You've probably helped defend our digital freedoms more than any other two digit id.

They might have requested anonymity so people don't ridicule themabout paying for the low UID. Well, actually, it doesn't matter why they requested anonymity. The fact of the matter is that they did. It's a little rude to point out their account when they explicitly wanted to keep it hidden.

It's not like GP promised to keep it a secret. The slashdot editors did, and they kept their promise. GP doesn't owe netelder anything, and you can hardly pretend that mentioning someone's slashdot uid is a breach of courtesy. It's not like he posted his phone number.

They might have requested anonymity so people don't ridicule themabout paying for the low UID. Well, actually, it doesn't matter why they requested anonymity. The fact of the matter is that they did. It's a little rude to point out their account when they explicitly wanted to keep it hidden.

With all the concern about the right to remain anonymous on/., I don't see why you would purposely go out of your way to lift that veil off of someone else.

I've been supporting the EFF on and off for years, and thought that this would be a fun way to encourage others to go out of their way to join the cause. I don't really have a use for the low UID because:

I've been married to the most wonderful woman on the earth for 28 years, and have no desire to date either Natalie or Giselle (I know who Natalie is, but who's Giselle?)

I'm not exactly a Slashdot Maven (I think that this is my fifth post in the history of Slashdot), although I